Related Field
The present invention relates to teat cups for animal milking equipment and, more particularly, to such teat cups enabling the application of treatment fluids to animal's teats and flushing fluid to clean the teat cups after milking.
Description of Related Art
Conventionally, milking equipment installed in a milking parlor comprises a milking point at each animal stall within the parlor. Each milking point includes a milking cluster of teat cups for connecting the equipment to the teats of an animal to be milked. In the case of cows, for example, each milking cluster has four teat cups.
Each teat cup comprises a hollow shell supporting a flexible liner which has a barrel portion for engaging about a teat and, at its upper end, has a head portion with a mouth through which the teat is engaged with the barrel of the liner. At the opposite, discharge end of the teat cup, the liner communicates with a flexible, short milk tube connected to a, so called, clawpiece of the cluster where the milk extracted from the animals teats is collected and delivered, via a flexible, long milk tube, to the collection vessel of the equipment.
Upon commencement of milking, a vacuum is applied to the teat cups, via the long milk tube, the clawpiece and the short milk tubes, for the purposes of extracting milk from the teat cups. This vacuum also leaks between the barrel of the liner and the engaged teat and is applied to a void formed about the teat in the head of the liner in order to capture the cup on the teat. Milking is achieved by automatically and alternately applying vacuum and atmospheric pressure pulses to the space between the shell and the liner of each teat cup in order to flex the liner and stimulate discharge of milk from the engaged teat. It is customary to apply these pneumatic pulses either simultaneously to the teat cups of a cluster or alternately to pairs of the teat cups. The clawpiece includes a distributor for distributing the pneumatic pulses to the individual teat cups, via flexible pneumatic lines or tubes.
After the flow of milk drops below a predetermined level, the milking cycle is considered to be complete, and treatment fluid including fluids such as iodine and emollients are injected into the heads of the liners to coat the animal's teats and help prevent teat infections. Each teat cup may be fitted with one or more injection nozzles for injecting the treatment fluid into the heads of the liners. The treatment fluid is fed to the injection nozzles via a distributor of the clawpiece
Then, the milking cluster at the milking point is withdrawn from the animal's teats (commonly referred to as “take-off”) by an automatic cluster remover or manually. Next, in a cleansing cycle, the teat cups are flushed internally with disinfectant and water and are dried with compressed air preparatory to use on the next animal to be milked.
Upon take-off, the milking cluster is designed to enable the short milk tubes to fall away from the centreline of the cluster so that the teat cups are inverted and hang with their heads downwardly from the clawpiece. Flushing is performed with the teat cups in this inverted position. Consequently liquid can escape through the head portions of the teat cups. The short milk tubes are connected to the clawpiece via spigots which are designed to cause the short milk tubes to be shut off at the spigots when the teat cups fall into their inverted position, so as to avoid entry of treatment fluid into the clawpiece and downstream milk tubes.
The commonly assigned patent publication WO 2007/031783 discloses a teat cup similar to that described above, wherein the injection nozzles of the teat cup are downwardly directed in order to assist flushing of the teat cups during the cleansing cycle. Specifically, since the teat cups are inverted during the cleansing cycle, the downwardly directed nozzles fire the disinfectant and water upwardly into the teat cups to improve the flushing of the teat cup.
However, although the downwardly directed nozzles improve the flushing of the teat cup, when the downwardly directed nozzles are used to supply the treatment fluid to the teats, the treatment fluid may not always reach up to the tops of the animal's teats unless a larger quantity of treatment fluid is supplied.